Enabling Effective Product Launch Decisions--论文代写范文

此外,产品质量是最重要的,产品发布决策的影响是需要考虑的。这篇paper代写范文的结果表明,改进公司的战术策略将有助于缩短产品推出和改善其性能。下面的paper代写范文进行论述。

Abstract 
  The present work looks into the question of optimizing the performance of product launch decisions—in particular, the decisions of product development duration and manufacturing ramp-up. It presents an innovative model for measuring product launch performance and optimizing the decisions by integrating a design structure matrix model for product development, a technical cost model for manufacturing, and revenue and warranty models for customer reaction to product quality into one model using net revenue as a metric. The model shows that overlooking the interactions between product development and manufacturing leads to suboptimal decisions. Furthermore, it points out that product quality is apparently the most important driver for product launch performance and that the effects of product launch decisions on resulting product quality need to be considered. Results from case studies demonstrate that improving firm’s tactical strategies will help shorten product launch and improve its performance, while factors such as low reputation or high product failure rate will require lengthening product launch to minimize their impacts. Finally, the model results are analyzed to yield direction for firms relative to strategies that can be implemented to improve product launch performance. The most effective strategy is one that improves the PD capability (higher ability to find and fix problems) and the second most effective is to improve problem solving in manufacturing ramp-up.

 Introduction 
  The manufacturing industry is facing multiple challenges: continually changing technology, fierce competition on a global scale, nearly identical products due to similar technologies and common components, and well informed customers. (Murthy and Djamaludin 2002) In the past, firms could rely primarily on steady state operations to turn a profit; transient events in operations occurred, but were generally noncritical to the firm’s performance. Increasingly, this is changing. Product innovations and market competition are driving firms to shorten product lifecycles and introduce new products at a seemingly ever faster pace. Firms need to release new products faster simply to ‘keep up with the game.’ There is evidence of increasing number of products release per firm in the past 20 years, as presented in Figure 1-1. (Bayus 1998) This trend has significantly increased the importance of ‘regular’ transient behavior operations such as product launches.

  Manufacturing product launch is the process of introducing a new product or new features in an existing product into a firm’s production operations. It can have a substantial impact to the firm’s operation depending on the complexity of the new product or new features. In the automotive industry, for example, Ceglarek et al. (2004) claims that product launch used to occupy approximately 5% of a product’s lifecycle 10 years ago, while now it can represent as much as 20% of that lifecycle, where product lifecycle is defined as the time between the first manufactured product until the time it is withdrawn from the manufacturing facility. (Polli and Cook 1969) From the manufacturing perspective, product launch can cause a disruption due to process change or process addition, resulting in the production line slowing down and/or decreasing product quality. During manufacturing launch, the facility either slows down the manufacturing rate of the new product to avoid encountering too many problems in the beginning or keeps the rate constant but suffers yield loss. This transient period operation can range from a few weeks to months. Depending on the problem solving process during manufacturing, the facility will increase the manufacturing rate until eventually it is at full capacity. This process is called manufacturing ramp-up. The manager must make decisions on the manufacturing rat of each period.

  However, introducing a product is more than just manufacturing. There are multiple processes that come before manufacturing launch, referred to collectively as product development (PD). PD consists of conceptual design, detailed design, prototyping, and testing and validation. During product development, the development team works on product concepts and design parameters and at the same time eliminates potential problems arising from the design. Ideally, the team will attempt to eliminate all design problems before submitting the design to be manufactured. However, due to time pressure and realistic resource limitations, the team is never able to eliminate all the problems and some make it through to manufacturing. These defects affect the amount of manufacturing errors encountered and the quality of the finished products. The manufacturing errors increase the manufacturing cost, while the finished product quality will influence the firm reputation and demand for the products.

  Manufacturing costs can be divided into fixed costs and variable costs. The fixed costs are generally associated with capital investments, while the variable costs are dependent on the production volume. By definition, variable costs are constant on a per unit product basis. Therefore, when considered as total variable cost, they are generally thought of as directly proportional to production volume. In matured processes, where changing cycle time has virtually no impact on the rate of errors, variable costs would remain relatively constant regardless of cycle time choice. However, in the case of manufacturing launch, where manufacturing processes are new and prone to errors, changes in production volume may lead to considerable changes in the rate of errors, forcing the manager to make different cycle time decisions, which influence the total variable costs. (paper代写)

  The finished product quality can also suffer during product launch. Unresolved design problems that exist during manufacturing and are not eliminated stay in the final products, resulting in low product quality. Low product quality affects the customer perception of firm reputation, leading to low demand and revenue. With the complexity and implications of product launch, manufacturing facility managers have multiple operating parameter decisions to make, such as the start of launch and manufacturing rate. In this case, manufacturing models are useful to help managers explore manufacturing strategies and anticipate the results. However, if the managers fail to realize the interaction between product development, manufacturing, and product quality, Because the ultimate goal of a firm is to maximize profit, a firm needs to understand that product launch is not merely the introduction of new parts and processes in a manufacturing facility. It is, in fact, a much larger process that is inseparable from product development and affects the sales of the firm even after the launched product is withdrawn.(paper代写)

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